


but the song remains the same

by marlowemayhaps



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Comment Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-12
Updated: 2011-07-12
Packaged: 2019-09-14 06:08:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16907556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marlowemayhaps/pseuds/marlowemayhaps
Summary: If you change one thing about someone – just a minor detail, perhaps, like their eye colour – just how much would it change them?How much would you have to change before they are a different person?





	but the song remains the same

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted as commentfic on my livejournal in 2011, archived at ao3 in 2018. 
> 
> prompt: "genderswap, doctor who, eleven"

If you change one thing about someone – just a minor detail, perhaps, like their eye colour – just how much would it change them?

How much would you have to change before they are a different person?

 

It was an accident, really.

It wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

 

A trip to a far away planet in a far off galaxy, just a holiday, somewhere to relax – Amy’s specification, and she knows now that she should have been more specific. Maybe that little planet with the seven moons and grass the colour of sapphires. They’d had fun there.

Tripping and stumbling down the dusty roads, drunk on adrenalin and a cocktail of drinks, the names of which none of them could quite get right, Amy and Rory listened to the Doctor philosophize on life and the universe, more wrapped up in each other than they ever were on the TARDIS as his words fold around them and become bright, bright, shapes and suddenly there is someone there, and he’s shouting and –

 

The Doctor doesn’t know what is happening.

He’s changing changing changing (regeneration? his mind thinks) but  
it’s  
... different

 

Irreversible, the Doctor says, a hand on the screen and a look in his (her?) eyes that they don’t quite understand – of course they wouldn’t, they haven’t grown used to something over a thousand years, don’t quite understand.

It won’t change anything, they think. Still the same person, they think. (but her mind works with a subtle difference and she knows that it won’t be the same, it won’t ever be the same.)

 

The next planet they’re on, she introduces herself as the Doctor and tells them that she’s here to help, there’s no need to be afraid, and they laugh at her. Why wouldn’t they? What good could she do for them, these huge men with their huge weapons? She is a woman and all she has is herself and a name that nobody recognises as hers.

She didn’t realise how difficult it would be, a Time Lady instead of a Time Lord, thought of as weak and in need of defending.

 

When had he ever needed defending?

 

There is a silence in the TARDIS, overpowering and uncomfortable as they try to ignore the large polka dot elephant in the room. The Doctor hates it, hates it, hates it. Rory looks at her with sympathy and Amy looks at him with confusion, because she is fine with it now, she knows that it’s not going to change no matter how much she wants it to.

She is him and he is her and they are the same, no matter what people say.

She just wishes people could see that.


End file.
